IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/197666121180-1184_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of antibiotics on mortality from infectious diseases in Sweden and Finland

Author

Listed:
  • Hemminki, E.
  • Paakkulainen, A.

Abstract

A study was carried out to determine whether the preexisting decline in mortality rates from infectious diseases accelerated after the introduction of antibiotic and chemotherapeutic drugs. Linear regression showed that in Sweden mortality rates declined faster in septicemia, syphilis, and non meningococcal meningitis after the introduction of these drugs. By contrast, for the ten other infectious diseases studied, (scarlet fever, erysipelas, acute rheumatic fever, puerperal sepsis, meningococcal infection, bronchitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and acute gastroenteritis) no such accelerated decline in mortality could be detected. The findings suggest that antibiotic and chemotherapeutic drugs have not had the dramatic effect on the mortality of infectious diseases popularly attributed to them.

Suggested Citation

  • Hemminki, E. & Paakkulainen, A., 1976. "The effect of antibiotics on mortality from infectious diseases in Sweden and Finland," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 66(12), pages 1180-1184.
  • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1976:66:12:1180-1184_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lazuka, Volha, 2017. "Infant health and later-life labour market outcomes : Evidence from the introduction of sulfa antibiotics in Sweden," Lund Papers in Economic History 154, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    2. Anders Ledberg, 2020. "Exponential increase in mortality with age is a generic property of a simple model system of damage accumulation and death," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-17, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1976:66:12:1180-1184_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.